Chapter 18
“Woah,” Rainbow Dash said. “You don’t think—”
“No, Rainbow,” Twilight interrupted, pinching the bridge of her nose in the crook of her hoof. “I very much doubt that Princess Celestia killed Sunset’s parents.”
“Well, then what—”
“The princess essentially adopted her,” Twilight reminded her. “Dismissing her as her student… Princess Celestia did essentially disown her and kick her out on the street.”
“Pff,” Rainbow Dash scoffed. “Whatever.”
“Okay—what the hay, Rainbow?!” Twilight said, angily turning on her friend.
“What?” Rainbow Dash said, seemingly surprised by Twilight’s reaction. “It’s not like—”
“Not like what, Rainbow? Not like she’s a pony who deserves the slightest amount of consideration for her feelings when she’s clearly lived a hard life.”
“Oh come on!” Rainbow Dash shouted. “You don’t actually believe any of that crap about her suddenly being ‘reformed’ any more than I do!”
“Of course not!” Twilight snapped back. “That doesn’t make it okay to rub her nose in her mistakes!”
“Somepony thinking they deserve immortality just because the princess taught them a few things isn’t just ‘a mistake!’” Rainbow Dash insisted.
That…
That hurt.
“…Is that what you really think?” she finally asked, her voice weak and trembling.
“Uh, yeah?” Rainbow Dash said, confused before her brain caught up with her mouth. “Not you, obviously,” she said, quickly backpedaling. You’re, like, Princess Cadance’s sister reborn and stuff!”
Somehow, that didn’t exactly soothe Twilight’s feelings. “Oh, so it’s okay because of some quirk of luck that we don’t even understand and can’t actually prove, but if Pr—if Celestia hadn’t been lying to me, then I guess having the audacity to actually think that I deserved something would be a problem?”
“If the princess had been lying to you, then you’d be an alicorn because you created new magic!” Rainbow Dash said, growing exasperated.
“Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?!” Twilight shouted back in anger.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Rarity said, placing a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder, hoping to calm her down. “Darling, you know that our dear Rainbow Dash has a tendency to put her hoof in her mouth. I’m sure she doesn’t have any objection to your situation.”
“Of course not!” Rainbow Dash agreed.
“Well, I guess that's what happens when you have double standards,” Twilight bitterly responded, wiping the moisture out of her eyes.
“Oh, for Celestia’s sake!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, throwing up her hooves. “You two are nothing alike! Just because you were both the princess’ student doesn’t mean squat! She’s the enemy! Next, you’re gonna say we should try and get along with Discord!”
“Yes, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight acerbically replied. “That was kind of implied when we decided to leave him free.”
“Tell me you’re not serious,” Rainbow Dash said. “He’s Discord! Even if he’s behaving for now, he’s just going to end up going back to his old ways eventually.”
“Well, maybe he won’t if you actually give him a chance!” Twilight said.
“And now you’re just playing Discord’s advocate,” Rainbow Dash complained.
“I’m not playing,” Twilight insisted. “I am advocating for Discord. And Sunset. And Chrysalis. And Luna. You can’t treat somepony like they’re less than a person just because they’ve been in the wrong.”
Rainbow Dash gestured her lack of belief in what she was hearing. “There’s no ‘just’ about it,” she said. “Except in ‘justice.’ That’s how it works. Somepony does something bad and they get punished for it!”
“There’s no ‘justice’ in making fun of somepony for having to live on the street.”
“That isn’t even what I said!” Rainbow Dash complained.
“Okay, that really is enough,” Rarity said, interrupting again. “Twilight, please. Rainbow may have been indelicate, but it was one comment. Surely it isn’t worth all this.”
Twilight took a breath and looked away from Rainbow Dash. “It only takes one comment to hurt somepony. That she ran away says a lot—especially since it’s her.”
“Yes, well, Rainbow Dash is going to have to deal with that,” Rarity said, sending Rainbow Dash a disapproving look. “Starting with explaining herself to somepony.”
“The princess?” Rainbow Dash scoffed. “Maybe the fact that Sunset ran off will get her to open her eyes.”
“Her too,” Rarity said, thoughtful. “But I was actually referring to telling Pinkie Pie why her ‘welcome to Ponyville’ party isn’t going to have a pony to welcome.”
“…Oh.”
***
Twilight was still mildly annoyed after everypony else had left, but at least part of it was directed at herself for turning that into an argument. That part of it, at least, had been entirely her fault, and probably wasn’t behavior befitting a princess.
Still, though. She’d meant what she’d said. She’d never thought that she’d have defended Discord like that and she’d thrown Chrysalis in just for shock value, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
Even if you hated somepony, they were still a pony.
The fact that she had not actually been planning on giving Discord a chance until he had made her laugh and actually listened to her was suddenly something that she was not especially proud of.
She still wouldn’t have insulted him right to his face, though.
“And now she’s probably back in the Everfree doing who knows what,” Twilight remarked to no one as she took a second look at the terrible state of the second floor of Sunset’s probably-not-a-bakery.
Would she come back?
It only took Twilight a moment to come to the conclusion that yes, she would. She would have to. Sunset had sent that letter to the princess gushing about her new place, so if she wanted to continue the whole ‘returning student of the princess studying friendship’ act, she was going to have to actually live here and try to make friends.
Twilight glanced in the direction of the bathroom and shuddered. Entirely ignoring the question of whether or not what Sunset was doing actually counted as making friends, it was hard imagining anypony living here.
The very idea made her skin crawl.
Somepony was going to have to do something about that.
Given that everypony else had managed to have some excuse to be somewhere else, she supposed that that was going to have to be her.
Admittedly, breaking the news about a canceled party to Pinkie Pie was a pretty good excuse, but it was probably still preferable to… this.
Well, it was probably for the best. Rarity was Rarity and any of their other friends would have to actually get their hooves dirty, which was as distasteful as it sounded.
For a moment, Twilight considered just calling it quits herself and calling in professional help. It was what Princess Celestia would do, and the princess would certainly pay for it. Nopony actually expected Equestria’s newest princess to scrub toilets.
Sunset would have done it, though; she hadn’t even balked at the idea. If the princess’ prideful, entitled student could do it then so could she.
It actually turned out to be an interesting challenge. Rather than spend the rest of the afternoon tracking down tools and cleaning products, she decided to do the job entirely with magic—and in order to not spend the rest of the afternoon tracking down cleaning spells, she decided to make do with the magic she already knew.
She did not, as it turned out, actually know a great many cleaning spells, nor was she all that good at coming up with new ones from scratch, but combining and applying her existing repertoire in new and interesting ways? That she could do, and she came away from the experience with some intriguing results.
Placing a shield spell between the wood and something she wanted to vaporize? Possible, but impractically difficult.
Actually magically vaporizing things? Also possible, but ventilation required.
Accidentally inhaling a decade’s worth of accumulated bird droppings? Not recommended.
What was really fascinating, though, was what happened when she decided to use a small, localized gravity well to collect loose material.
She already knew, of course, that her alicorn magic would cause spells to build in power over time and persist beyond the point that she ceased feeding them magic, but what she hadn’t actually considered was exactly how the numbers would work if she continually lowered her magical input as the alicorn magic built up.
Instead of allowing the spell to grow more and more powerful and subsequently take forever to actually go away, she ended up with a manageable gravity well that she only needed to feed a trickle of power to maintain and was still under her control.
She supposed that was how Princess Celestia and Princess Luna made moving celestial objects seem easy; they had long since built up the persistent alicorn magic they needed in order to do so and it just… stayed there, for the most part. Obviously, the fact that it was their special talent factored into it as well, but with enough time, even that probably wouldn’t be much of a hurdle—which would be how Princess Celestia had been able to move the moon during Princess Luna’s banishment.
It was fascinating enough that for a short while she forgot about what it was that she was actually doing experiments with—until she didn’t.
Hastily, she vaporized the clump of detritus that was caught in her little gravity well. She even remembered to hold her breath that time.
That was pretty much how it went. She tried various things on various problems, stringing her little gravity well along like a balloon. Restoring the water-damaged wood was relatively simple using the same process she had gone through downstairs, and all in all, she was rather proud of her results by the time it was dark. She doubted that a dozen professionals could have done it so quickly.
Her pride, of course, fell a little flat when she went back downstairs and found only a barren, empty room instead of any sort of party—not that she had expected anything else, but it was understandable that she would feel a bit unfulfilled when the pony who was supposed to be living there was still missing.
Well, ‘missing,’ with massive sarcasm quotes. She was probably out there right now working to undermine Twilight and her magic. No matter what Rarity’s excuse for forcing her to live in the city, Sunset Shimmer’s safety was probably the last thing that any of them needed to worry about. She was a powerful unicorn with fire for a special talent.
She’d be fine.
***
Twilight couldn’t help it. The first thing she did the next morning was look out the window to see if there was any sign of Sunset across the street.
There wasn’t, of course, and she was able to wait until after breakfast to head over and make sure that Sunset hadn’t come in during the night without disturbing anything.
She hadn’t.
“I don’t know what I expected,” she told Spike with a sigh as they came down from the second floor of Sunset’s place empty-hooved.
“Ehh,” Spike said, unconcerned. “She probably won’t be back for a few days, after she can just Rainbow Dash it and pretend nothing happened.”
Twilight gave it a thought and agreed, “That sounds about right.”
Just then, she opened the door and was greeted by the absolute last thing that she had expected to see.
An irate princess.
An irate Princess Cadance.
“Um?” was all that Twilight could get out before her old foalsitter fixed her with an unamused glare.
“I do not appreciate receiving letters that I cannot respond to in kind,” she said, her eye twitching. “First, you’re going to take me to Sunset Shimmer so that I can give her a piece of my mind—then you’re going to show me how to cast that spell.”
Twilight rose her hoof to stop Cadance and opened her mouth. A moment later, the only response she could come up with was, “How did you get here in less than a day?”
“I flew over the Crystal Mountains,” Cadance flatly explained. “Now where is Sunset Shimmer?”
“…I’m fairly sure that showing up to yell at her while sleep deprived isn’t exactly going to go how you think, considering what was actually in that letter,” she pointed out.
“Sunset. Shimmer. Now,” Cadance growled, causing Twilight to back off.
“Err, well, the thing is…” Twilight hesitated. She didn’t actually have any reason to keep Sunset having run off a secret, but—well—she wasn’t exactly sure how Cadance would take it.
“Rainbow Dash was kind of a jerk to her and she stormed off,” Spike explained in the gap left by Twilight’s hesitation. “Seems kind of huffy if you ask me.”
“You weren’t there, Spike,” Twilight said, managing to distract herself from the irate princess in front of her for a moment.
“And whose fault is that?” he shot back.
“Yours, for sending that letter in the first place,” Twilight reminded him dryly. “I thought it’d be best not to have the temptation if you weren’t going to control yourself.”
“Oh sure, blame the messenger,” Spike groused.
“Anyway,” Twilight said, turning back to Cadance, who didn’t seem to have gotten any less angry. “He’s pretty much right; Sunset teleported off yesterday and we haven’t seen her since.
“Really?” Cadance asked.
Twilight’s, “Yes?” was rather unfortunately unconvincing, purely due to the sheer ire being directed her way.
“Really really?” Cadance asked again.
“Really really,” Twilight said, managing a proper level of conviction this time.
Cadance stared Twilight down for a distressingly long moment… then collapsed nearly on top of her.
“…Cadance?” Twilight asked, her voice muffled under the weight of the slightly taller alicorn.
Spike poked her and she began to snore.
Twilight struggled under the limp and floppy form of her old foalsitter for a moment until she could disentangle herself enough to properly levitate her.
“Bleah,” Twilight exclaimed, spitting hairs from Cadance’s mane out of her mouth. “Ptew. Fweh. Spike, get the door,” she said, gesturing across the street at the library.
“Got it!” Spike said, rushing across the street to do so, though once he did, he just stood there in the doorway.
“Out of the way, Spike!” she yelled as she came up behind him, but he didn’t move. It wasn’t until she was pushing her way past him that she could finally see why.
Lying there in the library, exactly where she had been the day before yesterday, was Sunset Shimmer.
A very bloody Sunset Shimmer with party streamers and strips of a polka-dot tablecloth wrapped around her flank.
There was a heavy thunk as Cadance hit the floor.
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For some reason I thought it said Bleach, and I was very confused about Twilight's intentions towards her old foalsitter.
I hope Rainbow sees what her words led to happen, although she would probably deny responsibility taking into account her attitude
10495150
It probably looks much worse than it is, dried blood usually does.
10495213
I think any amount of blood is probably too much for ponies, despite them being little fluffy pastel colored deathworld residents.
I can already see how this is gonna go now. Cadance came angry. She's gonna see injured Sunset. That will make her have the feels. The feels cause Sunset to have feels. They work through bad feels. Then they become proper friends.
Or not, or I am completely wrong and this will be infinitely entertaining Sunset vs Cadance conversations. Which would be awesome.
10495299
I dunno. After that whole part about alicorn magic lingering, and Cadance flying in from the Crystal Empire (where she lives right above the Crystal Heart), I have a suspicion. I think Sunset is going to feel some kind of effect in regards to the Heart's magic when she encounters Cadance, although how that actually plays out I couldn't say. Maybe it lets her harden her heart again to go get the alicorn magic proper.
There's a very outside chance this might actually teach Dash some level of tact. And by "outside," I mean, "deepest parts of the Everfree."
In any case, the Sunset/Cadence catch-up should be very interesting indeed. But first, convalescence.
10495424
And if she did, how long til she repeats the feat?
"If the princess had been lying to you, then you’d be an alicorn"
"If the princess hadn't been lying to you, then you’d be an alicorn"?
I continue to enjoy this story; thank you for writing. :)
Bet Discord heard the whole conversation and was touched by Twilight sticking up for him also interesting how Twilight doesn’t really see herself all that much more worthy of Alicornhood
I can't wait for the next chapter its getting good now lads yeehaw.
10490880
Yeah and still has an emotional softspot with Celestia.
10495694
Probably because she realized in chapter 4 that she didnt earn it based on merit but by reincarnation/bloodline, which, yeah, understandable.
Dammit, Pinkie! We talked about this!
You said you weren't going to try to make your special cupcakes anymore.
You Pinkie Promised us!
10495694
10496463
Maybe she doesn't deserve to be a princess if it was only because of the alicorn reincarnation thing, but everypony deserves to be themselves. And if yourself just so happens to be an alicorn, you maybe kinda deserve to be that.
10467487
Yes, the evils of medieval capitalism/feudalism.
10496724
Yeah but having wings isnt really part of yourself mentally as much as it is physically.
10496842
That is actually a good point. I always sort of considered a pony's magic to be tied to their soul in some way, so if Twilight was able to inherit her previous life's pegasus magic, she should get wings to be able to use that power.
But this Twilight got her wings before (if) she got her pegasus magic, so that doesn't seem to be connected the way I had assumed.
Actually thinking about it, why does Twilight have wings? If Alicorn magic and Unicorn magic are completely separate, and pegasus magic is what lets a pony manipulate the weather and fly, why would gaining Alicorn magic give Twilight wings?
Maybe when the Elements hit Twilight and infused her with Alicorn magic, they also cast a separate transmogrification spell on her new body. Unless the Elements actually completely destroyed her old body and created an entire new one for her soul to reside in.
10496864
Im assuming she just grew new limbs, noting too different apart from being able to fly and her body being hypercharged so it is able to be semi-immortal and also goes past its growth limits.
10496871
I see. Well, we have pretty different ideas about what Alicorns are then. I'm coming at the idea from a more mystical perspective, and you with a more bare-bones science-and-magic angle.
I'll just say this then. If Twilight's former life's magic is like a piece of her soul, I really want her to get it back, for her to be whole again.
But if a pony's magic is more like a part of their body, then I don't care nearly as much. For instance, if I found out that I was the reincarnation of Charlemagne, I wouldn't try to break into the Vatican to steal my old skeleton back. I have a perfectly good set of new bones, thank you very much.
It would still be a bummer to spend a theoretical eternity as a winged creature that can't fly, though.
10496884
If I turned out to be the reincarnation of Charlemagne you bet your bottom dollar I am gonna go reconquer the Franc Empire. Plus, I kinda get confused as how magic would be part of someones soul, I kinda like to think of it as an extension of ones self.
10497371
Just an explanation about my thoughts on the magic-soul thing...
Cutie marks are tied to destiny in some way. Straight fact. Rarity calls finding her cutie mark "her destiny" in the flash back. A pony's cutie mark dictates not only their skills or some aspect about them, but usually their jobs and even purpose in life.
When Starlight removes a pony's cutie mark, it directly eliminates a good portion of their abilities tied to that cutie mark, as seen in the Our Town episodes. Combine this with the fact that a pony's cutie mark disappears when their magic is drained (from Tirek or otherwise), then that shows that Destiny, Cutie Marks, and a pony's individual, internal Magic are all directly linked.
Furthermore, when Twilight ascended to Alicorn-ness in the show canon, she is briefly transported to some other worldly place. Anyone can argue what that place actually was or was intended to be, but when I saw Twilight appear in a swirling field of stars, being guided by her immortal demi-god mentor-ruler, and shown all of her life's accomplishments and triumphs, before descending back to her friends in a new body or at least a body with new parts... I kind of interpreted that as some version of heaven or afterlife.
Having seen all of this in the show, I just personally came to the conclusion that magic is tied to the soul in some way. I am not suggesting that anyone should change their own views on the show based on my statements, I am only explaining my reasoning for thinking this way. And it sucks that I have to put this qualifier at the end, but I know from experience that I have to.
10497600
Yeah nah I am not trying to change your perspectives and i appologize if I come out that way when I talked earlier and I didnt think you did either, thats a good perspective though. I disagree with it though, but good on you.
10495605
She probably couldnt since in this timeline they arent teenagers that end friendships on a whim.
10497955
The Movie (2017) would beg to differ. And that's years in the future from when this story takes place.
10497911
You never came off as being pushy in your views, I just want to cover my bases. Some of the worse experiences that I've had on this website were from discussing this kind of stuff.
People have some strong opinions on this website about things like the various thousand-year-long imprisonments, mind control spells, the merits of Cadence ruling the Empire because her cutie mark is the Crystal Heart, etc.
No matter how civilly you try to disagree with some people, there's still occasionally going to be people getting upset.
10498007
To be fair, that was caused when the entirety of the Main 6 was under immense, immense stress and pressure.
Well, technically she's not wrong, change is a fundamental aspect of Discord's nature. Sooner or later he must change, or be changed.
And once again Cadence falls asleep in a random place, once more and we'll officially have a running gag going!